Committed (24 page)

Then a sound caught my ear. I looked at the police cruiser parked across the median. McCoy was screaming and staring at us from the back window of Whishaw’s car.

I caught the time on my watch—a quarter after eight in the morning. I grabbed my suit jacket from the back of the hotel room’s chair, put it on, and headed to the lobby. I tossed a wave to Claire, the girl working the front counter, as I headed for the coffee station near the hotel’s entrance. Bill and Scott were seated in the lounge area, waiting near the coffee machine. I headed over.

“What time did you guys end up getting in?” I asked.

“A little after two in the morning,” Bill said.

“And this hotel was able to accommodate you?”

Bill smiled. “Yeah, we got the same treatment.”

“How was the flight?”

“Well, we missed our first flight and then had to sit and wait around for another. That flight bounced us down to Houston, where our connection was delayed.”

“I heard you were dealing with something that made you miss your first flight, but I only got bits and pieces from Beth and Ball. Somehow you had another vehicle and body that were connected with the truck Frane was driving up here?”

“Yeah.” Scott shook his head. “I’ll give you the quick version, but basically, we have a couple more to add to the body count. So security from a wayside finds a classic Corvette parked for too long. It’s not something you would leave sitting. Security guy calls the local PD to see if they can get in touch with the owner prior to him having the vehicle towed. Well, he rounds the back of the Corvette to get the tag number to give to the PD and sees blood all over the rear bumper. The local PD comes out, gets in to the trunk of the vehicle, and finds a body. The DB had ID on him. Registered vehicle of the DB was the truck the couple had up here. Well, they still didn’t know what they were dealing with and were still missing the Corvette owner. The local PD goes to the man’s house, which was just a few miles from where we’d lost McCoy and Frane and finds the Corvette owner dead and our BOLO orange-and-white pickup from the farmhouse in the man’s garage. They called in to the local FBI, and then Gents and Makara called us. We spent pretty much all evening going over that, which is what made us miss our flight.”

“I see,” I said. “So we have these two on how many murders now?”

“Too many,” Bill said. “One of the local agents was shot, I heard?”

“Buckshot at a distance. I got an update on him last night. He went to the hospital and got patched up—nothing too major, thankfully. Frane assaulted a lieutenant that was working with us as well—just stitches and probably a concussion there. Both should be fine.”

“That’s good,” Bill said. He brought his soda to his mouth and took a drink. He made a sour face and dropped the can in the garbage bin beside him.

“Something wrong with your soda?” I asked.

“Yeah, unleaded,” he said. “The wife has been nagging me that all the caffeine from the energy drinks and coffee is going to give me a heart attack. She gave me a yarn about my kids not having a father and the whole works. She legitimately seemed worried, so I figured I’d at least try to appease her. If I go narcoleptic at the jail, at least you’ll know why.”

“What time are we supposed to be over there?” Scott asked.

“Nine,” I said and walked to the coffee machine to fill a cup, catching a look of envy in Bill’s eyes. “We can head out as soon as Beth comes down. The place is only a couple minutes away.”

“The locals there know we’re coming?” Scott asked.

“Yeah. I spoke with the lieutenant that Frane assaulted, about an hour ago. The regional jail and sheriff’s department are in the same complex, so he’s going to meet us. He said he’d walk us into where she’s being held and get us set for our interview.”

“And no clue on what she wants to deal with?” Scott asked.

“I don’t know what she has to deal with, which is what makes her asking to talk to someone about a deal, um… I guess, intriguing.”

“I guess it’s worth finding out,” Scott said.

“I agree.”

I heard the clack of footsteps against the tile floor, and Beth rounded the corner. “Morning, ladies,” she said.

I grabbed my coffee from the machine and moved to the side so Beth could fill a cup. She did and turned to Bill and Scott.

“Are we ready to go?” she asked.

They both stood.

“Yeah, let’s roll,” Scott said. “Get this over with and get back home.”

“Do you guys just want to follow us?” I asked.

The pair nodded.

We left the hotel a moment later. Beth drove our car, with Scott and Bill following.

“I got an update on the boy, Mark,” Beth said.

“Good or bad?”

“They found an aunt, mother’s sister, that’s going to take him in.”

“That’s good,” I said. “At least I’ll have something good to tell Karen.”

“Have you guys ever considered adoption? I know that you’d mentioned you were trying, and then you mentioned that you were no longer trying.”

“Well, if there was ever something that was going to stoke Karen’s coals on the topic, it would be something like what happened with this boy. I actually can’t believe we haven’t had an adoption conversation since I told her about it in the first place.”

“Maybe it’s coming, and she’s waiting for the right time to bring it up,” Beth said.

“That’s probably not too far off from reality.”

“Did you ask her about the dinner with Scott and me?”

“She said that would be fun,” I said.

“Okay. Good, because I already got us some reservations at a steakhouse in Arlington. I looked over their menu. Seems like they’ll have something Karen will like if she’s into the organic stuff.”

I found that thoughtful of Beth. “She’ll appreciate that. Completely different topic, but there has been something that I wanted to ask you.”

“Shoot.”

“Did you take some kind of self-defense training other than what was taught by the Bureau?”

“What do you mean?” Beth asked.

“Molly McCoy. The moves you put on her. That didn’t look like anything I remember being trained on—PD or Bureau.”

“Um.” Beth paused. “Yeah. I’ve been taking some classes a couple times a week. Well, actually more than a couple times when I can.”

“Classes? Like self-defense?” I asked.

“Yup. A couple different ones, actually. After the whole thing with Brett Bailor, I wanted a little more training than the standard. So I enrolled in a few self-defense classes. Tuesdays is my Advanced Defense Concepts class, Wednesdays are my close-combat classes, and Thursdays are tae kwon do.”

“Remind me not to piss you off,” I said.

Beth chuckled. “I might actually stick with the tae kwon do and see how far I can advance. It’s fun.”

Beth went on to tell me more about her training, the rest of the ride. We exited the freeway and pulled into the Cascade County Sheriff’s Department and jail complex half a mile down the frontage road. We found parking spots, and Scott and Bill followed Beth and I to the front doors of the sheriff’s facility, which spread out to our right in a two-story-long rectangular building. Behind the sheriff’s building sat what I figured to be the jail—three stories and looking more like an office building than a prison, aside from the areas that were barbwired.

I pulled the front door for our group to enter and filed in behind them. We stood in a small lobby that looked like any police station—walled off with a window and a metal door. I approached the glass window.

An overweight man appearing in his sixties and dressed in uniform adjusted his glasses on his nose. “Help you?” he asked.

“We’re looking for Lieutenant Whishaw. He’s expecting us.”

“Ah yes, the FBI guys.” The man looked past me. “Sorry—and gal. Sure, let me get him paged for you. Just a second.”

He made a call over the PA and told us the lieutenant would be up in a moment. I spent the time reading over a flier for a county-food drive they had set for the next week. Lieutenant Whishaw appeared from the metal door a couple minutes later.

I pointed at the bandages stuck to his forehead. “How’s the head?”

He knocked on the side of his head above his ear. “Hard as a rock. Just a few stitches, thirty or so, a few staples, nothing too serious.”

“They didn’t give you a day or two off?” Beth asked.

“The hell with that. I’m fine,” he said.

Beth and I introduced the lieutenant to Bill and Scott. Whishaw held the metal door open with his heel and shook Bill’s and Scott’s hands. He waved us in and walked us through their station.

Whishaw spoke to me over his shoulder as he walked. “I called back to the detention center after we spoke this morning to let them know that you guys would be here to interview her. I got a call back about a half hour ago that her attorney was present. They should be ready for us by now.”

“Sure,” I said. “Hear anything about what she’s trying to deal with?”

“No. Nothing,” he said.

We zigged and zagged through the station and past their bullpen to a long corridor at the back of the building that led us into the detention center. We got checked in, and Whishaw showed us through the complex to their interview rooms.

We sat in the observation room and watched as a pair of guards seated McCoy, chained, in the room beyond the mirror. She wore an orange jumpsuit with black numbers across her chest. One of the guards chained her to the table in the room, and the pair exited. Her attorney entered and took a seat at Molly’s side. The two said something quietly to each other. We heard a knock on our observation room door, and it opened. One of the guards stood in the open doorway—the other remained in the room.

“They’re ready,” the guard standing at the door said.

Beth and I stood and headed next door while Bill and Scott waited in the observation room with Lieutenant Whishaw, the assistant warden, and the guy running the equipment to monitor the room.

I pulled the door open and allowed Beth to enter. Then I followed her in and took a seat beside her and across the table from McCoy and her attorney. McCoy’s head was down. She stared at her hands locked to the table in front of her.

“We’re Agents Rawlings and”—I pointed at Beth—“Harper.”

Molly McCoy lifted her head. “You’re murderers is what you are,” she said under her breath.

Neither Beth nor I responded.

“I’m Attorney Keith Buford,” the man said. “My client has a specific request for relinquishing some information. The information she has is, um… Let’s just call it monumental. Though I have to say this isn’t really a deal on my client’s behalf, and her request is against my advice. It’s so far against my advice that, as I sit here, I’m debating standing and leaving this room.” He let out a breath.

“Just do what I say,” McCoy said. “You’re the attorney. Just shut up and do your damn job.”

I glanced at Beth. There wasn’t a word that had come out of the attorney’s mouth, other than his name, that didn’t seem odd. I looked back at him. “The request?” I asked.

Buford stared at McCoy, who’d returned to staring down at the table before her, and said, “She’ll give you some information regarding something that has nothing to do with her and, if it pans out, is without a doubt enough for a significantly reduced sentence. She wants to give the information in exchange for where she’ll be tried.” He looked back at me. “That’s it. She just wants to have a say in where she’s charged. She’s also prepared to plead guilty to every charge even though, as of this moment, neither she nor I, for that matter, know exactly what the full extent of the charges will be.”

McCoy raised her head and looked at her attorney. “What, you think they’ll let me ever see the light of day again? You think I have a shot of convincing a courtroom to let me go. Get real. These two know what Nick and I did. Hell, I had a gun to this bitch’s head not twenty-four hours ago.” McCoy looked at Beth. “I should have blew your head off, bitch. Would have made no difference to me in the position I’m in now. Maybe that would have stopped you from shooting the love of my life in cold blood.”

“Cold blood?” Beth asked. “You must have missed the part where he went for his gun or shot at federal agents or killed who knows how many people.”

“Whatever,” McCoy said.

With McCoy in front of me, I had a few questions that I wanted answers to prior to hearing what she wanted to exchange for a deal.

“Where did you two meet?” I asked.

“What business is that of yours?”

“How long were you two together?” I asked.

“Again, none of your damn business.”

“Well, you say he was the love of your life, right? I’d just like to know how this relationship developed.”

“I’m not telling you shit. You think you can kill him and I’m going to give you anything? He didn’t deserve to be gunned down like that.”

“But the countless people you killed deserved what you two did to them?” I asked. “The boy deserved to see you kill his parents in front of him?”

“That was different,” she said. “We were trying to get away.”

“How did that work out for you?” Beth asked.

McCoy stood from her seat and jerked at her chains. “You want to start something with me?”

“I’m sure that attitude will help you where you’re going,” I said.

The guard stepped from his position in the room at the back wall. “That’s enough, inmate,” he said. “Back in the chair.”

McCoy let out a puff of air through her nostrils and sat. The guard took his original position against the wall.

“So are we playing ball here?” the attorney asked.

“She wants a say in where she’s tried, and for that she’ll give us some”—Beth made quotes in the air—“monumental information. That’s what we’re looking at here?”

I figured she would want to be charged in one of the states she’d committed, or was a party to, a homicide in that didn’t have capital punishment. I guessed it was understandable for someone that knew she would spend the rest of her days in a cage.

“Correct,” Attorney Buford said.

“I have to say you’re laying it on pretty thick about the information Ms. McCoy possesses,” Beth said.